Saturday, May 11, 2013

And the Beat Goes On . . .

May 10, 2013

Things a person must do before buying a 28 year old
boat:
Get a thorough survey of the boat and read it carefully.

Get a survey of
the standing and running rigging.

Get an engine
survey.

We arrived at the
boat on May 3, with a load of personal gear and equipment, ready to
start replacing the 30 bags of stuff that the previous owner had left
aboard with our own belongings, a major step in transforming
Outrageous into Bel Canto. When we
checked our messages before heading for the boat, we found one from
David van der Spuy, the man we had chosen, at Tyler's recommendation,
to check out the rigging, informing us that he and Tyler would be at
the boat at nine o'clock to do the inspection.

Dave working 5 stories up on the mast

David is a
fascinating guy, a South African, slight of build and wiry, with a
thick South African accent. After explaining to us what he was going
to do, he strapped himself into the bosun's chair, attached the
mainsail halyard to himself like an umbilical cord, and had Tyler
begin winching him up the mast. Soon he was swinging around atop the
54 foot mast like an acrobat, calling notes to Tyler as he looked at
every wire and fitting, from the mast top to the spreaders, and on
down. He found several shrouds with broken strands, corroded
fittings.

His final report
was not encouraging. He recommended totally replacing the rig, except
for the headstay, which had been replaced fairly recently. We should
have been prepared for this. Some people recommend replacing the
standing rigging (shrouds and guys that hold up the mast) every ten
years, and just about everybody agrees that you shouldn't trust it
for more than twenty. From a safety standpoint the standing rigging
is the most important part of the boat. If a shroud or stay breaks,
the mast can come down. And in any kind of a sea, the mast in the
water, still attached to the boat by all of the wires that did not
break, can wreak havoc, even to putting a hole through the hull and
sinking the boat.

The report on the
running rigging was just as bad. The halyards which are used for
raising the sails, and most of the sheets and other control lines,
had been left on the boat while she had been in storage at the
owner's dock for the previous four years. Superficially, they looked
great. Many were comparatively new. But almost all of them had spots
where they had been exposed to water and weather, and these spots
were mildewed and in some cases rotted. Lines used for running
rigging are expensive. They must be strong, but soft enough to allow
the crew to handle them comfortably. Like the wire rigging, most of
the lines and the boat must be replaced. Dave demurred from giving us
an estimate on how much all of this was going to cost until he had
worked out a plan of action and priced out parts. Our 3 a.m. worry
that night was that the cost of re-rigging might exceed the value of
the boat.

Meanwhile, we went
ahead getting the boat ready to be hauled from the water for the
bottom work. On Monday, the appointed day, Grover and Rob met us at
the boatyard (so that we would have transportation once we arrived
there with the boat), and we piled into the Honda and headed back to
Grover's. It took an hour or so to get the boat ready to leave the
dock.

I wanted to handle
the boat myself, but Grover convinced me that leaving his slip in the
shallow creek was tricky, and that he should handle that part of it.
As we pulled out, he demonstrated how by turning the wheel just so
and gunning the engine in sync, you could get the boat to turn in
it's own length.

From
that point on, Grover stood by giving me tips on how to handle a
33000 pound boat, and Rob, the great guy who has been doing some work
for us, helped Angie handle lines. The four mile passage down the
Severn River from Grover's dock to Back Creek and Bert Jabin's
Boatyard was
easy. I just had to steer the boat in a straight line from point to
point. We were motoring because the object was to get to the
boatyard, not enjoy the ride. And the slight drizzle would have taken
the fun out of sailing anyway. But I was scared nearly shitless when
I learned that I had to bring the boat in between two wharves with
barely more distance between them than Bel Canto is long, especially
when the dock hands instructed us to turn around in there in order
to have the stern facing the hoist. Angie:
We'd called ahead on the cell phone to let the yard know that we were
coming in, and there were two workers coming out on the wharf to meet
us. They yelled that we had to turn the boat around. I looked at the
space and asked Rob, “Can we do this?” Now you have to know that
this boat weighs 16 tons. That's a lot of boat to maneuver—about
like driving a semi-truck. My job was handling the lines on the bow
while the worker on the dock yelled out what we should do.Jim:
Grover told me to turn wide but be careful because she pivots near
the stern. I nearly blew it by turning the wheel the wrong way at
first, but then I corrected and gunned it and she turned on a dime,
just as Grover had said she would. The stern swung a few feet from
the wharf on the port side. The guys on the other wharf, where we
were heading were yelling at me to slow down, so I threw her into
reverse and gunned her. The dock worker reached out and stopped her
with one hand and the prop rotation pulled the stern over to port.
Everybody said it was a perfect docking, done like a pro, but I knew
that I was just damned lucky!

On
Wednesday we received Dave's estimate by email. It was bad, but not
quite as bad as we feared. To make the necessary repairs and
modifications to the rigging was going to cost $12000, more than a
third of what we had set aside for all the repairs, additions, and
other expenses we had planned for in getting the boat ready to sail.

Angie:
(Wednesday, May 8) Another eight hour day working on Bel Canto. She's
now in the yard, resting on her keel, braced by stanchions that keep
her from falling over. So now we've traded a long ladder to board her
for the 60 steps and Grover's steep trail. Yesterday we had monsoon
rains and didn't get much done on the boat, but today is
beautiful—cool, blue sky, light breezes—a perfect day to take the
sails down. Oh, did we mention that the sails that we were so happy
to get up the last time we were here had to come down again? Jim was
awake a 3 a.m. the day we brought her over here worrying about how
and when we were going to do that if it was necessary. Now we have
some really big sails, especially the mainsail and the genoa
(foresail). Together they would just about cover the floor space in
our house. My trust level is really low, so when Jim said, “Let's
take the sails down,” I envisioned a gust of wind toppling the boat
over onto our car, or worse, onto the two brand new sailboats next to
us. Our million dollars of liability insurance wouldn't cover the
damages, to say nothing of fact that we would probably be severely
injured or possibly die. Jim is a good teacher and has lots of
sailing experience, but did I really trust him that it was safe to do
this? Usually I just dive in and do what has to be done, but I was
really nervous about this. But I knew that we had to do it because we
were leaving tomorrow, and the sails had to come off for the mast to
come down, and the mast had to come down for the rigger to do his
job.

"On the hard" and ready for her new name

Jim:
We lucked out on the weather. Taking down the sails would have been
dangerous if there had been much wind from any direction but dead
ahead. You see, the sails had to be raised in order to take them
down because they come off the track starting at the bottom. But
fortunately the breezes were gentle and right on the nose. Angie:
We worked a good two and a half hours doing this. We had to sort out
all the lines and halyards, and there are many, but we got the sails
down and we were very proud of ourselves. After we got the sails down
on deck we had to fold each one (there are three), because we had to
store them inside the boat. You start by folding them like an
accordion. The nautical term is flaking. After they were flaked, we
rolled them up, tied them, and struggled to get them below decks. The
biggest sail must weigh about 80 pounds. As
we were stowing the sails, Ann Miller, who will be supervising the
painting of Bel Canto's bottom, showed up. The keel is a reddish
orange color now, and my main concern wasn't how much work the keel
needed, or how much money it was going to cost (I let Jim worry about
that). It was, “What are our choices of colors?” We all have our
priorities, and I am bound and determined that we are going to make
Bel Canto not only the best sailing vessel possible, but also the
most beautiful. We finally decided on black for the bottom paint. It
won't be visible except when we are sailing and heeled over a bit,
but it will go well with the deep blue hull and red accents. When
Ann left I thought I would settle down with my Kindle, take it easy
for a while, and read. Dream on Banjo Picker. Did I actually think
the captain would allow me to rest while he was working? Jim had been
removing the name Outrageous from both sides of the stern when Ann
came. To do this he had to balance on the ladder, using a heat gun
(something like a hairdryer) to heat up the vinyl letters so he could
peel them off. This left a sticky gunk, which he had to saturate
with Goo Gone and then scrape off with a plastic putty knife. It was
hard, tedious work. He was getting ready to go back to this when he
saw me with the Kindle. “I'm sure you can find something that needs
to be done if you look around,” he commented. I could and did.

Beginning to make her ours with Sarah's spoons

Getting
an older boat ready to sail and live aboard is a lot like what
happens when you buy an older house, or as Jim says, when you get
married. There are always a few surprises and things you don't
anticipate, and some of them can be quite costly. As we were on our
way back to Ann Arbor, we got a call from Chris Oliver, who was
working on our engine. The heat exchanger, which cools the engine by
transferring heat from fresh to salt water, has to be replaced.
That's going to be another couple of thousand dollar bills. I have
to say that this has been a challenging project, not to mention an
expensive one. But we are having fun working together and still
eagerly looking forward to when we can move aboard and set sail.